Doctor Who - Mud-Wrestling GILFs!

"What do you think of that good old rattling adventure yarn, then?"

"Rotten."

"Ah, but surely it had a certain surrealistic symbolistic quality? Just captivating the very futility of life, death and indeed the search for the existence of god himself was mirrored by microcosm, mm?"

"Load of old cobblers."

"Certainly."

Watching Doctor Who with my family can, at times, be bloody annoying - particularly when my dad makes a lame joke which, while not incredibly offensive in and of itself, has already been done on the internet to a degree you want to slug him (for example "She can't pilot the TARDIS because she's a woman driver!" Ho, ho and thrice ho). At the climax of Jodie's eighth episode, The Witchfinders, he commented it was like watching some hyperactive kids playing with their action figures as the monsters barely manage to spit out their wikipedia entry before our heroes are busy killing them with some serious polarity-reversal.

I personally prefer a hyper-excited monster fight than the wrist-slashing misery of the Capaldi Years (my parents hadn't noticed that, but agreed when I pointed it out), but even Whovians noticed this felt like a two part story that had at last second been compacted into a single episode. Indeed, with its brutally misogynistic plot, half-assed celebrity historical and a plot thread about a camp British monarch trying to bang the Doctor's young male companion - not to the mention the abrupt "Hahah! We're aliens! Oh shit we're dead!" climax - you could write it off as another bizarre effort of televised Who trying to make a sparacus story work like Hide, Face the Raven or Knock-Knock. What does fishface himself have to say?


3/10. Yet again a potentially interesting historical episode was spoiled by a pointless tagged on alien concept. Started out well but as soon as James I appeared the quality plunged downhill. What could have been a gripping and edgy episode dealing with witchcraft persecution and the Pendle Witch Trials degenerated into a semi-comical romp with a generic sci fi threat and a depiction of the King that even Horrible Histories would find rather silly. The characterisation of King James was absurd. He would not have spoken with a generic 'posh' accent and would not have travelled on his own to a remote Lancashire village without members of the royal household. And suspects being dunked in the river were innocent if they sank not if they drowned.

How would you not sink when tied to a ducking stool?

And given the ducking stool was normally a non-fatal punishment, in this episode specifically turned into a pointless execution by a corrupt woman to cover her tracks, it's hardly a problem.

Anyway, once again Jodie's Doctor lucks out on a historical holiday and reminds us all that our ancestors were bigoted, untrusting psychopaths and nowhere is more dangerous than Earth that once was. There's always a strain in expecting companions to enjoy the dangerous life of the TARDIS but right now you'd think all three of them would refuse to step outside if it's Earth pre-2018. In this case, it's the primitive past when people are burnt as witches.

It's fair to say that while the TV series hasn't actually tackled witchcraft paranoia to this degree, it's still not exactly brimming with surprises. Yeah, Jodie ends up on the ducking stool with her magic-wand-waving-suspicious-intellect gets her targeted as Satan's live-in lover, but it's not like the male Doctors weren't constantly being accused of witchcraft either. True, the drama is more on whether her captors are going to knowingly give into selfish paranoia rather than if she'll easily escape, but it's hardly pulse-pounding material.

I can't judge from the great unwashed but it's hard to find a "burn the witch" plot that differs much from that Blackadder episode - the slightest bad luck is interpreted as the apocalypse, overzealous witch-hunters are summoned, scapegoats picked out entirely out of spite than logic, there's a clearly rigged trial, our heroes are about to be executed, they escape at the last moment and there's the clear implication if there's any evil going on around here then it's the bastards wanting to ethnically cleanse witches. Probably the only notable twists to the formula are Monty Python and the Holy Grail (where it turns out the mob actually did get the witch, who admits her guilt when she gets a fair trial) and Buffy: Gingerbread (where the mass hysteria is being fed on by demons and the mob with flaming torches act terribly casual about the whole thing).

Doctor Who, of course, has never had the guts to do a proper witch-trial story. The paranoia might be an overreaction but there really is a plague-spreading Terileptil or ancient daemon or primordial trickster who have pushed the locals to panic and it's always obvious that if these alien time meddling bastards hadn't turned up, none of this horror would have happened. Even Steve Lyon's "pure historical" The Witch Hunters needs a telepathic space girl going through puberty and Rassilon's time scoop to cause chaos in Salem. This week's episode is no exception, as some rather naughty aliens unwittingly turn humanity on itself.

And then King James I turns up, and I'm reminded that for all the gags that Blackadder didn't have Lord Flashheart turn up in the serious episodes.

Alan Cumming - in his second DW appearance, but we don't talk about the first because shut up that's why - immediately makes his entrance like Atlan the Space Rat arriving during Torchwood: Children of Earth. It's utterly jaw-dropping to see this over-the-top, screaming whoopsie turn up on a seemingly one-man mission to make the episode impossible to take seriously. Innocent women are being murdered and as our mincing monarch boasts that he's Satan's enemy, it's like revealing Jack the Ripper was Big Gay Al. He'll murder every witch he finds, but in the best possible way and my good man, fancy looking on the inside of my godpiece for a truly Plantagenet portion? Ooh er, nudge-nudge, say no more!

If you had to cope with the dearth of Doctor Who in the early 1990s you might have caught Time Riders, about an eccentric female time traveler and her artful dodger companion who end up marooned during the English civil war and hijinks ensure. With plenty of gags and comedic grotesques, the violence and carnage passes by with cartoon-like jolliness until the last episode where the Witchfinder General turns up. He doesn't make jokes. He doesn't have fun. He takes the whole thing deadly seriously and while our not-Doctor can easily bluff her way with logic and sass to the Roundheads and Cavaliers alike, the WG isn't going to budge. He believes she is a witch and death is the only way she can be freed from her current fate. Nothing will stop him.

I think the effect would be ruined had he started doing Kenneth William impressions while prancing around with a feather boa, which is all but what happens here.

Of course, Cumming is a good actor (he can still reduce me to tears in Bernard and the Genie) and the script makes it clear this outrageous performance is just that. A performance. The real King James is paranoid, on the brink of a nervous breakdown and his Liberace-style antics are in fact a coping mechanism. The Doctor demolishes his act in a few lines, noting that his anti-Satan campaign is a desperate deflection of James' fear he himself might be tainted by evil and is determined to overcompensate. Alas, James doesn't end the episode older and wiser. In fact, having seen supernatural bog monsters possessing human corpses and a police box vanishing, he's given nothing but solid proof that "magic" is real and evil does walk the Earth. His claim he'll preemptively rewrite any history books to ignore the events of this episode might solve some historical gaffs, but not much else. If anything, he'll be twice as vicious and ruthless now, though presumably he'll be torturing folk for being creatures from Metulla Orionsis rather than the depths of hell. And won't he look fabulous?

While both King James and the ridiculously-appropriately-named Becka Savage have shades of grey to their acts of religious execution, the aliens of the week do not. The Morax, barely cameoing in the last bit of the episode, is a race of sentient mud that infect bodies because they're evil. They're just the Gelth, really, and while the mud-witches do look creepy and unsettling with their sonic bitchslaps and horrible screams, their unsympathetic nature is quite surprising. I mean, they're pure evil and if dunking the witches would stop them, then it's purely justified. Even Jodie's patented once-an-episode decrying pointless violence is left hollow as the Morax are totally beyond reasoning with or defeating peaceably. They have less personality than the witches of TV Comic or the Carrionites.

Becka Savage is, of course, the true villain here. She ditches her common family for a cushy house and some riches the first chance she gets, performs some ecological vandalism, then when all the signs are she's suffering demonic possession she tries to sweet-talk the baby Jesus into sparing her by... murdering women she knows are innocent of witchcraft. Specifically her own family, who might suspect she's turning into living mud. It makes all her sanctimonious preaching about cleansing the area twice as hard to stomach and her attempt to play the sympathy card is thankfully averted as King James is disgusted and would have executed her for her crimes no matter how many muddy tears she weeps. Savage is perhaps the most loathsome villain since that prick in Empress of Mars, and we've had the Saxon Master, a bloke who rips open folk's jaws for shits and giggles, not Ben Chatham and not Donald Trump since then!

Of course, it's very hard to make a morally-bankrupt witch-killer sympathetic.

But Keith Allan managed it, and even justified the "ordeal by water" idea...

The witch shall be ducked. If she dies, it proves the devil has abandoned her and she shall be buried on consecrated ground. If she lives, showing the devil still to be in her, she shall be burnt alive! Hard to know which one to hope for...

Well, there's no answer to that, is there?

Duck and Cover

The traditional "Oh if Target Novelizations were still around" shtick, with the stories done in style of the books the episodes reminded me of - The Sontaran Experiment, Marco Polo, The Crusades, The Green Death, The Space Pirates, The Visitation, Robots of Death, The Horns of Nimon and, respectively.

 

xx

Doctor Who - Amazon Chaser

I must admit to feeling strangely detached from Doctor Who this year. Now I must stress I am not disenchanted or disillusioned with the series, my only complaint being a lack of closure to Arachnids in the UK. Given seven episodes so far, Jodie's not let me down yet unlike her predecessors with truly unsatisfying installments. She's remained completely convincing, likeable and engaging. While her three pals aren't given equal limelight, they too are engaging, sympathetic and not complete fucking headcases. The core concepts have been interesting, there's been no irritating story arc or repeated meme, and only two stories have been set on contemporary Earth. The villains have been unexpected, the monsters unusual, and the theme music hasn't made me want to perforate my own eardrums with rusty needles.

So... in short... what's my problem?

I don't have a problem, yet for some inexplicable reason I don't have the attachment I had to the show I once had. I don't eagerly count down the seconds to the next episode, the show feels low priority to me somehow. Is it the lack of publicity? The lack of spoilers to fuel my imagination? The interchangeability of everything after the fourth episode? While these antics are almost certainly deliberate on Chibber's part to rehabilitate the show in the minds of the Great British public, and are definitely working, they've wormed the show free from my deeper affections. I might not have a bad word to say about it, but nor do I feel compelled to demand others watch the show.

Could it be that after four years of Capaldi's bleak, depressing and nihilistic pointlessness (which even the novelization of Twice Upon A Time couldn't redeem, noting that the Twelfth Doctor's character was a complete aberration and totally untenable to the format) where I spent a huge amount of headspace trying to work out

a) why Moffat was determined to make the show utterly unpleasant and horrible
b) why fans thought this was a good thing
c) why it was totally going over my head

there is now a show that requires no such post hoc rationalization and excuses. I am, to be blunt, out of an abusive relationship where I was trying to justify all that unacceptable behavior and now with a well-adjusted and normal companion, I'm just not used to it. Like Buffy, I've become so used to obsessed with an unstable bastardry of my love I'm unable to wrap my head around a good, wholesome replacement.

It's not helped by the fact that no one willing to discuss the show seems happy with it. Whovians, tellingly, is a show designed to cope with Moffat's story-arc riddled version of Who and this uncomplicated version leaves them with literally nothing to talk about or speculate. Instead they're left hyper and unsatisfied by what they watch, often missing huge plot points (they complained that locking up the giant spiders would be cruel because they'd suffocate, missing the fact they were going to suffocate anyway and locking them up would ensure they wouldn't kill anyone in the meantime, or in this episode they believe all the robots are blown up when that doesn't happen).

Online, Sandifer and her cronies flip-flop between hating the show for not rocking the boat while hailing it entirely on what minorities are involved. There's too much sci-fi in the historicals and not enough dark horror in the comedy episodes. Even spara's obsession with "political correctness" rings utterly hollow - even if you were the sort to believe murderous racism above criticism, you'd be stumped trying to find the "good old days" episode that praised it. Doctor Who has always been at its core a show that championed rejecting blind acceptance of the status quo, from the very beginning. Hell, the bigger-on-the-inside police box is that in a nutshell.

The vocal majority in the UK seem to despise the show for "politically-correct snowflake social justice issues" and yet, it always has been. They recoil from anti-racism and anti-capitalism, and crave the days when Tom Baker fought monsters instead of social ideals. Yet, none of that happened. No one - no one - can wave the DVD of this golden age, when the movie cut of Genesis of the Daleks has the Doctor fighting Nazis doing Nazi salutes with iron crosses on their uniforms while arguing about fascism, prejudice and racism. Jodie Doc's visits to Alabama and the Punjab are, if anything, more subtle since they don't need to establish "this is SPACE intolerance."

So, Kerblam! with its "SPACE Amazon store" with a criticism of both huge impersonal corporate industries and also unibomber student radicals is probably the closest to Classic Who as possible. Yet we're supposed to be outraged that the Doctor doesn't support the destruction of this society, because she doesn't approve of mass slaughter of innocent bystanders. When she lets Charlie the Psycho blow himself up out of sheer stubborn stupidity, audiences are disgusted she let the working class villain die rather than chucking the head honchoes to their doom like The Sunmakers. A pacifist hero is not bloodthirsty enough apparently, because no one seems willing to believe it's a satisfying Doctor Who story without sociopolitical figureheads up against the wall when the revolution comes.

In a world where the revolution has come and left us with Donald Trump, Brexit and the revolving conveyor belts of politicians achieving nothing before they stab each other in the back, it feels right that the Doctor is - to quote the apolitical and subtext-free Pertwee incarnation - not to mindlessly destroy everything but make the established system work. Trump would rather let his citizens suffer and die from the imperfect Obamacare system rather than, say, try and fix it. Instant gratification had lead to instant dissatisfaction, and no one seems patient anymore.

So it's entirely appropriate that online criticism is just like Charlie, refusing to accept anyone knows better than them and they have the right to demand total destruction of anything they don't like. As the Doctor notes, Charlie's plan to make mankind revolt against robots involves mankind killing itself. Not appealing to reason or showing sympathy or empathy, but just deciding the ends justifies the means. As Charlie is willing to kill millions of innocent bystanders to trick governments into doing what he wants, transgender campaigners and feminists demand any and all white men to be fired from their jobs. How dare a straight man write for the Paternoster Gang! Only lesbians should be allowed to write for lesbians! Never let Caucasians work for Big Finish! No cis males in the BBC! No wonder they're upset by an episode that dismisses diversity as tokenism, and that ensuring that minority groups get preferential treatment doesn't automatically fix everything.

Kerblam!'s murky grey morality is unwanted nowadays when everyone wants black and white. The galactic shipping company is not a particularly pleasant or stimulating workplace, and the dehumanizing automation is definitely undermining this particular civilization. Charlie's grievance with Kerblam! is legitimate, but if that gives him the right to slaughter all the customers for the greater good, doesn't that mean the company is equally entitled to kill its own workers to confront Charlie face-to-face with the murders he commits? Poor Charlie is desperate, convinced he's painted into a corner. So is the Kerblam! system. The most horrific part of the episode, as sweet little Kira unintentionally kills herself with a booby trap - who is more to blame? Charlie for starting this mess or Kerblam! for trying to end it?

It draws me back to Dario Fo's masterpiece The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, where an idealistic reporter is forced to choose between letting a group of corrupt, murderous policemen die (thus supporting vigilante extremism) or saving them and ensuring they escape all justice and continue their crimes (thus supporting a corrupt system with no desire to improve itself). "These things," grin the maniac narrator, "just can't be solved gradually."

So the play has two endings. The journalist lets the coppers die (with the Italian audience cheering the triumph of extremist philosophy) or she saves them and they immediately kill her because she knows too much (which the audience laugh at because it's black comedy at its darkest). The maniac is the first to say that he'd prefer an ending where no one died and the bad guys were punished, but that it's simply not an option.

To quote Jodie's predecessor, "Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones, but you still have to choose."

Alas, it seems no one is willing to accept anything than their own personal vindication as an acceptable ending.

Right, Spara?

5/10. Better but still dodgy. Like a cross between McCoy era Doctor Who and the RTD era. Liked the satire on Amazon type companies but felt rather CBBC ish and very preachy about the dangers of radicalisation - like the government's Prevent programme turned into an episode. Could have been a good satire on Amazon type companies and how they exploit their staff however this was spoiled by the direction it took, portraying the young man as a murderous radical. How should our society deal with the fact that automation could indeed in the future destroy millions of jobs? Should we not move to a universal income system now in preparation and also move to a four day working week? Thankfully there were no black lesbians with disabilities in it this week, but it also lacked the UK's finest actor, Adam Rickett.

Sheesh.

Well, anyway, with that out of the way I'd say Kerblam! was the most satisfying episode since Rosa. All three companions got a fair crack of the whip, from Graham's sympathetic janitor routine to Yaz's unprovoked moral outrage and Ryan's comedy panic as he deals with both his dyslexia and a Pixar-style infinite conveyor belt sequence right out Toy Story or Monster's Inc. The Doctor's as awesome as ever and this story shows her at the most connected to the previous eras of the show, as she shows off her fez, psychic paper and shouts of "Brilliant!" in the first five minutes - almost as though they knew this would be perfect for a Children in Need sneak-peak and we're reminded this is the same Doctor from the golden era of the revival.

(There's even a perfectly-judged gag reference to The Unicorn and the Wasp which, given the similarity between "Agatha Christie and the Giant Wasp" and "Amelia Earhardt and the Giant Spider" presumably comes across as a running gag to new viewers. No doubt the "Emily Pankhurst and the Giant Cricket" anecdote will be revealed before the series is over.)

The plot of a dodgy Space Amazon, despite its superficial similarity to The Warehouse goes off in a completely different and clever direction. The creepy delivery men manage to recapture the spooky uncertainty of the Ood and their unreliable loyalties, being both sympathetic and terrifying, likeable (as they diss Lee Mack's stand up comedy) and sickening ("Great conversation, guys, but let's pick up the pace!"). Speaking of Lee Mack, he acquits himself well for both scenes his in rather than his insult comic public persona, but his obviously-doomed character is killed off-screen. Kira, meanwhile, is impossibly sweet and the most likeable female guest star since Grace and if they hadn't killed her off, she would automatically qualify as TARDIS crew member. Despite their smaller amount of screen-time, both make more impression than the "good" and "nasty" senior management who generously give their workers two weeks paid leave, but send them off work for a month if not indefinitely.

Another bone of contention, as I mentioned earlier, is the belief the Doctor - having made a big thing about her best friends being robots - apparently destroying all the delivery droids. She doesn't. The poison-filled bubble wrap isn't designed to harm robots, because if it did the plan to incriminate the creepy mechanical men wouldn't work. True, we see them disappear in a huge shockwave of poisonous smoke, but they aren't shown to be destroyed and nor should they be. Like the "cruelty to giant spiders" this is just negative confirmation bias.

As Ryan himself says - "That's not how we roll."

A pity more can't follow his example.

Doctor Who - White Guilt Of Death

It's the sixth episode of the Doctor Who on this year
It's called Demons of the Punjab and there's plenty of fear
It'll be full of minorities and ridiculously PC
It bothers Jeremy Clarkson about modern TV

Doctor Who should be British and everyone all white
Just Daleks and Cybermen and no subtext in sight
It was bad enough when Peter Capaldi was all PC
Jodie Whittaker's put the JW into SJW, don't you see?

The companion's a woman, a Muslim and bi
The nation was shocked, the old guard did cry
What about that dyspraxic angry black guy?
He still can't ride a bike after the second try!

For such an inclusive show, there's only one white man
"This is an insult to the British!" shout the Klu Klux Klan!
"How dare you tell us to feel such guilt and shame!
For colonial pasts which we're not to blame!

Who gives a damn about black women on a bus?
Remember when Doctor Who never made such a fuss
About social concerns and government choices!
It silenced the minority so we didn't hear their voices!

We're sick of this, let's get it off our chest
Stop telling us what to think when we know best
This BBC propaganda has gotten all out of hand!
All these leftie-leaners are ruining our land!

So cancel Doctor Who because the ratings are down!
It was way better with that guy from The Crown!
We hate all this inclusion and we hate all this woke
Virtual signalling? Pah! What a joke!"

And now this story's shown on Remembrance Day
About Indian Partition, hell that's not okay!
So sometime last century the country was split in two
It's hardly worth discussing in Doctor Who!

So, a lot of people were killed and a lot of people died
They're just bloody foreigners, Lord Mountbatten cried
Who cares about Hindus? Who cares about Sikhs?
Let the monsters kill them, they're all bloody freaks!

Why is the Doctor there? Is there one good reason
For the TARDIS to arrive in this precarious season?
Well, it's been five episodes and now it's time for Yaz
To hog the limelight and all that jazz!

Her character's flat, she's the least of the bunch
Even though we've met her family twice for lunch
Her granny's all cryptic, she won't say what she knows
About a broken watch whose hands are froze

But Yaz wants the truth, that's what she wants to know
Lucky there's time travel in this here show
A TARDIS can take her back to her nanny's young life
Guaranteeing shenanigans and plenty of strife!

Perfect timing, Team TARDIS meet a nice young man
Who turns out to be betrothed to Yaz's young nan
He's been forgotten by history so there's a twist in the tale
His romantic intentions are destined to fail

His younger brother's a douche-bag, full of rant and fire
Remember Being Human? In that he was a vampire
He played D&D and he ate little girls
While whining about this unfair world

That he turned out psycho was hardly a surprise
He smug and sneering and he told lots of lies
Though it was a shock he killed a holy man
That tends to be the evil alien's plan

There were creepy aliens on scene but of course
Watching our heroes travel to town on a horse
The aliens looked creepy, they loitered in the gloom
They had a long history with the local bride groom

Back in World War Two, they were stalking the dead
Leaving weird purple smoke in their stead
What were they up to? What motive was their goal?
Well it turned out they had lots of love in their soul!

Like Testimony, they gave the dead their due
Who would have died alone without them, it's true
They weren't evil and they weren't mean
It was total coincidence they were at the scene

Yes, humans were the real monsters it seems once again
As partition of India turned friend and friend
Things got violent and it was time to run
This is a historical there's nought to be done

Yaz had to force herself to simply stand by
As people in her past were destined to die
Though it wasn't as heartbreaking as Father's Day
It was a downer ending we have to say

Remember Shakespeare or Robin Hood
When historical stories left you feeling good?
There was plenty in the past that was awful bad
But it would be nice for an ending that wasn't sad

Yaz got lots of screentime compared to her mates
But was left helpless when it came to the fates
Of the people she loved, of the people she liked
Nothing was done, no one was proved right

So Yaz went back to twenty-eighteen
Not telling anybody what she'd just seen
Did nanny remember? At first it seemed so
But maybe not, the memory's the first to go

And nothing was achieved and all left unsaid
Yaz probably regretted getting out of bed
So while the public were disgusted at this story
Plenty of fans shouted "Embrace the glory!

It's the best episode of the year, that is clear to us all
The sort of adult drama that makes us fans stand tall
It makes you frown and sob and sad
And the idea of partition really makes you mad!

When was the last time TV made you think
About all the atrocities and caused such a stink
Reminding the world there's more than the UK
Than Brexit, than Trump and the US freaking A?

It's a testament to the skill of all those involved
That every viewer will refuse to absolve
Generations past of their numerous crimes
In periods they dared call "the good old times".

But the price is depression for this clarity
As we're all stuck out in this reality
There's no Doctor here to even the score
We can't even get protection from the law

When Trump laughs as California burns
And gunmen in Melbourne earn quick returns
People bitch about sci-fi will of ps o' c
It's easier to yell that to you and me

Maybe next episode things won't seem so bleak
But I guess we'll all have to wait till next week
Will the next installment escape all this angry flack?
Pity it stars that irritating bastard, Lee Mack.

It's that time of week again, both with yearning and with dread
When Mr. Fishface Asparagus rears hir scaly golden head
What does it have to say for itself? What wisdom to impart?
Oh what now from the boring old fart?

I give the story four out of ten, call it forty percent!
Interesting slice of history yet too much sentiment!
Should have bee a historical with no science fiction
All those alien elements bolted on cause friction!

There's not much to say when shove comes to push
But I rather prefer all of this remastered Kate Bush 
Plus it's finally occurred to me that Halloween is past
So I better pull some more Chatham from my arse!

And what of the SCADS and their zealout Lighthope?
Has he hanged himself when he's got enough rope?
How's he coping with the show living in twenty-eighteen
When his organization disses Rose for Christine?

I've given "Whitticker" 5 episodes now, it just ain't working for me
She has a dull-dull zero character full of superficiality
I wouldn't register her acting, in my opinion solidified
The appeal of this Doctor leaves me quite mystified.

It's too late to impress me, and it's happened before
Eccleston, Tennant, Smith I found generic and a bore
I kind of liked Capaldi but only the first year
Do I even like this new Who? Le me say, "No fear!"

"Whitticker" is as bad as Adric, no wonder the "raitings" are down
I still watch the show, but only when wearing a frown
Been watching since the 80s and now it's naff, I despair
Why can't Dave Segal be canonical? It's plain unfair!

I don't like this series and I hate "Whitticker"
I'm happy to spread rumors about "Chinballs" and her
That they're both unhappy and they both want to quit
So I misspelt their names? Frankly, I don't give a shit!

But it looks like we're stuck with her til 2020 at least
Three years with a woman? Somebody get me a priest!
It all went wrong when producers started to write
Script editors are too scared to tell them they're shite!

I felt "Moffit" was good when he didn't run the show
When he became producer, nobody said "No"
To his stupid ideas and complicated story arcs
His empowered female characters and comedy larks 

But if "Moffit" was script editor, I'm sure things would improve
Unlike McCoy-era JNT who had lost all his groove
The series is suffering, I admit I have no idea why
But probably it's cause the Doctor's no longer a guy

Instead he's terrible actress who has no career
Apart from a high-profile role that makes me sneer
When it comes direction and scripts that are bad
There's no better judges than the folks from the DWAD!

Watching Alien: Covenant While Utterly Pissed

0:21 - my word, doesn't the 20th Century Fox logo look fake nowadays? I mean, I suppose it always was, but not it's clearly a CGI model rather than an artists' impression of a real artifact. Mind you, imagine it was real - it'd be utterly stupid-looking on three sides. Imagine living next to it and seeing a bunch of horizontal lines out the window with that bloody fan-fare. It'd make anyone contemplate unleashing acid-blooded monsters upon humanity, so it would.

1:23 - "How do you feel?" "Alive." Wow, that skipped a bit, surely?

1:35 - the feng sheui is all off, Steve.

1:52 - "NO! THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!!!!"

2:31 - Pity he didn't call himself Michaelangelo. Or "Littlest Dickus". And who puts a statue like that in a room too small for it so you have to cut part of the ceiling out? Not someone to inspire godlike loyalty, that's for sure.

2:51 - in case the Aryan Nazi ubermench vibe wasn't clear. This is set in the future. It'd have been cooler if he was asked to play Gotye's greatest hits or the theme tune to the Big Bang Theory. Obviously no one has come up with anything worth playing for the last few centuries. "Play Dennis Leary's "I'm An Asshole!", David!"

3:37 - yeah, that's the expression of a three-law compliant android who's not going to rip your head off

3:43 - a question for the ages? The answer is obviously "one weekend pissed in Ibiza!"

4:05 - where do we come from, where do we go, where do we come from, Cotton Eye Joe?

4:14 - and you needed to build an android before you could discuss this? You couldn't go on a talk show or something first? You had to actually create someone who didn't have any alternative opinion so you could bully them into believing you? You were way more open-minded in Priscilla Queen of the Desert, dude.

4:31 - firstly, explain dinosaurs, dickhead and secondly, how does building a human shaped Wagner-playing iPod help solve the origin of mankind? I mean, my record player never once solved a metaphysical conundrum. OK, well, that one but we don't count that.

4:52 - logically the response here is to say, "Yes, you're immortal, so you can afford to spend a couple of decades doing what I ask since you have the rest of eternity to do your own thing." But no, sulk. And then humiliate him. Come to think of it, why hasn't Mr. Weyland gone "Hold the front fucking page! I can just plug my brain into an android body and live forever! God can go screw himself! I have achieved immortality!" No, instead give your rebellious robot more reason to crush the life out of your filthy pink little body.

5:36 - what a thrilling horror film. Someone has played the piano and poured a cup of tea. It's enough to drive a normal person screaming from the theatre in looking for the sick bags.

5:53 - so the title means "Alien Agreement". I would have loved to see the arbitration process with the Alien Union Rep knocking back cups of sulfuric acid and arguing facehuggers and chestbursters deserve parity, with a non-strike agreement for the first three films while demanding time and a half for the eggs who don't hatch till the third move. Seriously though, what agreement? Who is agreeing to what? Is it Ridley Scott himself agreeing that Prometheus could work on its one?

6:19 - yay. Captions to inform the plot. And you'd think establishing a long-term colony on the outskirts of the stellar neighborhood might require more effort than just shoving some hillbillies into a convo.

7:00 - and activating the solar panels is clearly something a flight computer is incapable of doing on its own. Do they need a living human to make the call? If so, why get Walter the android to do it? And why does he need to put on his hoodie to press a button?

7:28 - costumes provided by The Mighty Boosh.

7:29 - crew checks complete? He looked at two! Out of the dozens in that one room!

8:28 - I know it looks cruel, but it's the only way to stop the Trump genome from continuing.

8:48 - wait, so there's a planet called Covenant? Why would anyone call it that? Is the moon dubbed Verbal Contract? Sheesh!

9:01 - again, the computer couldn't have thought of that on its own?

9:15 - two thousand green bottles, hanging on the wall... and if one green bottle, should accidentally fall...

10:15 - the cryo-pod caught fire. That's something the insurance company won't cover.

10:26 - bashing his head with the blunt end of a fire axe is not a recognized form of first aide. I must stress this

11:00 - and the first death of the movie is down to shoddy workmanship. This bodes well.

11:32 - you can tell true grief for a loved one when they make a beautiful symmetrical collage of your possessions on your bedspread while watching a screensaver. If they don't, it was all lies, man.

11:52 - a rusty nail around your neck. That's not going to be dangerous, is it?

12:35 - um, that suggests he was a total arsehole and you're better off without him. Is that why you hit play?

13:15 - man, they all got dirty and greasy the moment they were out of cryo-sleep, huh?

13:35 - I am genuinely confused. Why does he need to tell everyone there's a "monumental tragedy" when they were all there to see the Captain slow-roasted and then disposed of the body? And isn't the loss of the Captain, upsetting as it may be, be the easiest and most straightforward problem to solve?

14:01 - oh, wait, there was some off-screen carnage too. But surely one of those was Walter removing the embryo as a biohazard? Let's just hope the rest were all soulless gingers, am I right?

14:26 - fancy that, someone else is a tad puzzled at this macguffin. And if no one could predict solar flares, wouldn't they have safety precautions already in place?

15:01 - oh wait, the ship's called Covenant! It's still a stupid name, though. They should have called this Alien to the power of minus three cubed.

15:27 - you've told them all the ship is borderline screwed and about to collapse and they still want to have a wake for Richard Bransen? Do they not understand priorities? Surely they can get drunk about the tragedy later? Actually, good plan. I'm going to just keep drinking until until the next sensible, logical thing to happen before I comment again.

17:00 - 19:00 - actually, why's this tense "tighten the chains" business in the movie? There's no monster there. No reason for anyone to do this. She could have her rubbish speech about midlife crisis over a cup of coffee. It would certainly save time with her angsting at a friendly toaster. Can she really find no humans sympathetic? And, wait, they're now having their grieving moment. All of that argument could have been cut out completely! Maybe replaced with something to make us give a damn about these losers...

19:44 - Weyland was a total godfreak. Why wouldn't his company support people of faith? Wouldn't it be harder to find any atheists fit for command? Damn, I need to keep drinking.

23:29 - it's already screaming of contrivance. So if there hadn't been a random solar flare on this random colony ship and this random astronaut spent slightly less time on the random repairs, he wouldn't have picked up the random signal. And a random bit of interference is randomly identified by a random John Denver fan who randomly happens to be in the same room at the random time. Any excuse, am I right? Any excuse!

24:56 - have we forgotten Goldilocks already?

25:15 - 26:30 - good point, how did Earth's galactic empire missed a perfectly-habitable planet right on their doorstep? Especially as they were looking for just such planets? She's right, it's more likely this is a "monumental" mistake rather than diving right into the first suspiciously-convenient world they find. At the very least, it's probably inhabited and the colonists won't have anywhere to settle. These retards deserve it. I bet they'd have gone to investigated the first haunted house they could find on Friday 13th if they could. If the Company let such cowardly idiots run their colonization program, it was an accident waiting to happen.

29:00 - wow, this perfect planet has storms capable of shredding the ship apart like it did earlier. Let's dive straight into it instead of, I dunno, waiting till it clears. Idiots. Darwin-fodder idiots.

30:25 - "This is why I hate space!" Um, firstly you're on a planet, not in space and secondly... why did you become an astronaut? It's like someone with chronic seasickness and aquaphobia becoming a sailor. Mind you, Hornblower managed it, so...

31:45 - meh, it's Jurassic Park on a wet Tuesday.

33:00 - actually, it would be out of character for these idiots to check the atmosphere before blundering out into a strange planet. It's perfectly in keeping they'd be this dumb. What we need is a Weyland-Yutani rep laughing they finally got rid of the B-Ark of telephone sanitizers and this would all make perfect sense.

34:47 - what is this Grand Designs: Outer Space? I want to see Kevin McCloud on this death-planet now.

35:36 - wheat on an alien planet? Could this be the Kraals again?!?! (Actually, that makes sense. Consider the android-obsessed alien warmongers with creepy S&M fetishes and a love for doppelgangers and this becomes more and more credible).

37:10 - "Can you hear nothing? BECAUSE THERE ARE NO SOUNDS TO HEAR! Except the rain, the thunder, the wind in the trees, the squelch of footprints and the gratuitous exposition, of course..."

38:21 - why would they let smokers be colonists? Think about it. They'd use up valuable oxygen supplies, be more prone to respiratory sickness and be useless without a steady nicotine supply. This is truly a B Ark that humanity couldn't get rid of fast enough.

38:56 - given the spores are, for narratorial convenience, invisible, why do they go through his ear instead of up his nose or in his mouth?

39:39 - do those things EVER land properly? Or is this how they're supposed to look? Why are they never found from the other side?

42:20 - so why are all of Shaw's possession dumped underwater in the spaceship cloak room? Huh?

45:11 - 50:50 - yes, see, the B-Ark totally explains why the reaction to "unexpected viral contamination" is to chew some bubblegum, throw away protective gloves, ask no questions, rip clothes off infected, get covered in their diseased blood, seal them in quarantine while you run around being an idiot, have an emotional breakdown and forget any first aid, hug a bloke while his spine is exploding against your hands, repeatedly wander into blood-pool to slip and fall over, refuse to keep your communicator with you so you have to run back and forth to get it, shoot the ceiling, crush your ankle, fire into a cupboard marked "DANGER HIGH EXPLOSIVES" and destroy your own shuttle. And, back-bursting aliens aside, this must all be stuff taught to colonist crews. These creatures were not send to colonize a planet, they were banished from the gene pool. Good luck, David, finding anything of use there.

51:05 - ironically, the bullet-ridden alien was the only survivor. He earned it, really. Smartest dude in the scene.

52:02 - props to Walter there for his "Gee, you don't see that every day!" look to camera.

53:47 - could not give any less fucks about these idiots being disemboweled by the aliens

54:11 - Archer: "Yeah, that is really super-bad for your ears. Mwarp. Mwap."

54:30 - Note how he never says "if you want to live." No false promises from David, there.

55:33 - no one will ever really feel the desire to ask David why his secret base is surrounded by Pompeii-style calcified corpses of an entire alien race, or what it says someone looks at a mass-grave of thousands and thinks it a prime bit of real estate. Not even "uh, do those corpses scare off the aliens" type thing? This is clearly part of the intelligence test David sets to prove himself superior to these losers. He actually has to tell them all this because not one of them thinks of asking!

59:03 - is the psychopathic killer android SUPPOSED to be more likeable and charismatic than the humans, because that's damn well what's happening.

1:01:10 - yes. This man is in charge. It's amazing any of them are still alive.

1:02:11 - why can't the super android control his hair growth, anyway?

1:03:04 - 1:05:33 - "Whistle and I'll come. Don't be shy. Hold it nice and easy. Purse your lips. Blow into the hole gently. Watch me. Now put your fingers where mine are. Raise them as I put pressure on them. Gentle pressure on the hole. Weight of a cigarette paper. That's it. I'll do the fingering." No subtext at all. And don't ask why he suddenly gave himself a haircut to look exactly like you, that'd be rude. It's a nice flute tune, though.

1:07:05 - you know, it's not common for a paradise planet to be the testing site for alien death goo. You can't really be expected to be prepared for ancient bio-weapons testing by crazy prehistoric aliens. Just saying.

1:08:42 - so this missing spaceship, unseen for two thousand years since it was lost on a weapons-r-and-d base where horrible bio-warfare occurred, has suddenly turned up over our city with no word of contact from anyone aboard as is now clearly about to empty its payload over the population. We, the superior Engineers, will stand out in the open waving instead of doing any kind of security check and quarantine. What could possibly go wrong?

 1:13:14 - you know, if they listened to the damn computer, it would have ended happily.

1:16:11 - impressive, making the psychotic android sound the more reliable one. And he was surprised humans would be upset at having their heads ripped off their shoulders.

1:17:39 - yeah, tell the pilot his wife's dead when he's trying to land the damn ship. There's never a better time. What's more, make him leave his position and sneak into the corridor to tell him when he should be flying.

1:18:27 - just where did David get all that brass steampunk microscopes? Huh? Answer me that?

1:19:49 - 1:20:55 - yeah, this just proves David's kill-all-humans proposal is logical, really, doesn't it? Nothing that stupid has a claim on continued existence. "Yes, it's perfectly safe, I can assure you, me the crazy bloke who has dissected all sorts of life forms, cheerfully watched your mate get decapitated and just told you directly to your face I need fresh human incubators for my unnatural experiments. Dude, how much more reassurance do you want?" Jeez, we're not supposed to root for the facehugger, goddamn!

1:22:17 - why IS he wearing that cowboy hat, indoors, in the dark? I mean, WHY?!

1:23:18 - I defy anyone not to mirror David's reaction when asked such a stupid question.

Now watching this with Dave Brubeck's Take Five playing in the background. Mellow sax and chest-bursters. Much more enjoyable than this film, which is two sodding hours long. Or, to put it another way, too sodding long full stop!

1:25:43 - so... he just wandered back to his crazy bachelor bad? He got bored of his new xenomorph that quickly and squelched back through the tunnels dripping in gore. And no one noticed? I'm not saying I don't buy that they'd be that stupid, just that it would be nice to clarify that.

1:26:37 - HAH! UP YOURS, BUSTER!

1:27:44 - this is mutual masturbation? Or Michael Fassbenderbation?!?!

1:31:54 - yeah, forget miss-attributing Shelly, it's stating the bleeding obvious that shows David really is unhinged.

1:32:25 - Identical android fight. As Brian Griffin would say "Are we really doing this?"

1:33:20 - wait, are you saying everybody's dead?

1:33:29 - nice to know the engineers not only worshiped Lord Nelson but Saturday-Night-Fever-John-Travolta.

1:33:44 - "Ahah, I have now taken Walter's place and even disfigured my own face to match his, a detail no living humans would be aware of and thus totally pointless! Still, I don't know who wrote Ozymandius and all the humans are retards, so this pointless cunning should generally balance itself out. Heil Geiger!"

1:34:27 - and this is why even men in rubber suits are superior to CGI.

1:35:10 - or you could just break orbit and fry the bastard in atmospheric friction. No, on second thoughts, run out onto the hull with a machine gun while in full-flight. That's much more sensible. It would be stupid not to, really.

1:37:04 - Alien versus Bob the Builder. Whoever loses, we win.

1:41:24 - I'm actually filling in a green slip refund form while this is on. That is how much this film is gripping me.

1:41:58 - if those red lights were eyes, this'd be quite creepy.

1:42:58 - if facehuggers are that efficient, why do they have to stick to faces at all? Mmm?

1:43:49 - you know, we should forgive those horny teens for the shower sex in the middle of an alien emergency. After all, they don't KNOW it's an alien emergency, they think it's a happy ending and they're not wasting water. The fault lies in the computer again, for not thinking that maybe it should interrupt the iPod playlist to alert them to the danger. Assuming David didn't sabotage the computer. In which case, this gratuitous bit of naked murder should be perfectly-excused. That said, there was more nudity in the original Alien. And just from John Hurt.

1:44:21 - the original Alien had the xenomorph rape Lambert to death with its tail. This one just plays footsies and bites her head off. R-rating my arse.

1:45:21 - stop wasting water you morons!

1:45:46 - this is just like Planet of Evil, you know.

1:46:00 - 1:50:29 - It's amazing how easily the Goodies' square dance tune can improve an alien bug hunt.

See?

And I'm sure that truck would've been needed on the original colony planet.

1:52:44 - he's just doing this out of sadism rather than malfunction. You can't blame him.

1:53:30 - it would have been better if the computer could only find the Spice Girl remix. Or maybe some more Denis Leary "I'm an Asshole."

1:54:04 - how convenient there's an empty drawer. That's just sloppy space management, that is.

1:54:28 - What? Just two face huggers? And he froze them for the next decade so he can ponce about the ship? And who thought it would be a good idea to end a film with Wagner scoring the egg-eating scene from Cool Hand Luke played backwards? The Alien franchise used to be Red Dwarf without the jokes. Now it's not even that.

1:57:17 - I'm just waiting for the caterer.

1:58:52 - Zee Catering? Still, I'm surprised anyone had any appetite on this film after the main star had to vomit up face-hugger-filled condoms on demand.

2:01:51 - heh, they have to put a special disclaimer to remind people that not only are the characters fictional, so is Weyland-Yutani. Because we were all bound to get confused by that, wouldn't we?

Doctor Who - The Pting from Another World

Well.

It's easier to review something you hate than something you like. And it's easier to review something you like than something you don't care about. This is why The Caves of Androzani and The Twin Dilemma end up on either end of the great Doctor Who polls whereas Terminus, The Faceless Ones and Underworld float forgotten.

Of course, judging a story is a very subjective experience. Arguably The Twin Dilemma is the worst possible story, yet it must surely rank higher than The Monster of Peladon. No matter how horrific or tasteless Colin's debut is, at least it isn't boring. No critic ever watched Romulus, Remus, Mestor and Hugo and has gone "Wow, this is dull and unsurprising." Some critics, myself included, can barely tell one episode of the Peladon sequel from another.

So, The Tsungara Conundrum isn't a failure in that sense. Like the more recent series of Family Guy, I was diverted, interested and entertained for the run time though certainly my brain felt no desire to retain any of it afterwards. Were my OCD not compelling me to review the damn episode, it would have vanished from the windmills of my mind soon enough. Especially as the ABC is no longer advertising the series at all!

OK. The Tsungara Conundrum, easily destined to be the most mispelt title since The Crystal Bucephalus, kicks off with the classic sci-fi setting of a junkyard planet full of scrap at night, and you can easily imagine the crews from Futurama, Farscape, Lexx or Red Dwarf picking through the debris as well as Team TARDIS. Unfortunately, whatever the hell the Doctor is looking for, she finds a "sonic mine" instead. Could this be a deliberate trap for the Time Lady? Is this revenge from the Stenza? Or maybe Not-Ben-Chatham the Racist Time Meddler?

Before we can find out precisely who put a landmine in a tip and why, it goes off and the next thing our dazed protagonists know, they're safely in a hospital. So far, so irritatingly familiar to BF listeners (though in fairness, this isn't World War One this time). Our crew were rescued by a Tsungara spaceship, a combined ambulance and uber service who scooped up the crew and are now taking them to Space Hospital UK.

So we meet our cast of Calm Experienced Medic, Panicky Inexperienced Medic, Old Woman With Heart Trouble, Her Android PA, Her Resentful Little Brother, and Yoss The Pregnant Man. Oh, then something halfway between Nibbler and Stitch arrives and starts to eat the spaceship. This little pixar-style alien, clearly inspired by the hellbeast munchkins from Galaxy Quest, is of course the most divisive aspect of the program. A CGI masterpiece, undoubtedly, the problem is that most viewers are unable to cope with any DW monster not trying to be Ripley's Xenomorph and consider such differences outright failure. This vicious little critter, the Pting, is not trying to be an omnicidal serial killer from the darkest of nightmares, and more like MiniMe from Austen Powers.

Now, people might find that a ghastly idea, but surely a successful comedy alien like the Adipose is better than an unsuccessful scary one like the Myrka or the Taran Wood-Beast?

Anyway, added to this is that Tsungara have a string no-tolerance to Pting policy and threaten to blow up the space ambulance which the Doctor fiendishly holds back by hitting the snooze button. Not Danger UXB, it must be said, but buying time by swiping left has to be a very 21st Century way of thinking. She twigs that the Pting is only eating the spaceship to suck up power, so she tricks the ugly little bastard into eating the bomb and jettisoning him into space. It worked for Jim Carrey in Mask and does pretty much the same here.

Meanwhile, Old Woman With Heart Trouble reconciles with Her Resentful Little Brother then dies heroically steering the spaceship. And then Her Resentful Little Brother takes over steering because he could be a pilot like her, but chose not to be, and he wasn't bulshitting. Yoss has a beautiful baby boy. Calm Experienced Medic dies, but Panicky Inexperienced Medic takes charge and learns and grows. Having survived the journey, the cast hold hands and give Dead Old Woman a proper space funeral.

So.

Quite.

50 minutes of broadcastable entertainment on a Sunday evening. Inoffensive, bread-and-butter, acceptable Doctor Who. Of course, it's got a lot of haters but mainly for complaining what it wasn't rather than what it was. Like, say, Mr. Colchester from Sparacus...


3/10. Childish and very forgettable. Similar set, similar spaceship setting. Shame this childish run-around had none of 'The Ark in Space''s menace, tension or gripping drama. That was just a childish little thing , ridiculous joke alien. The Meep was an excellent alien. Genuinely unnerving at the time. I'd very much like to see the Meep in the televised series, but I doubt it will ever happen. The fish people are totally underrated.

See? It's one step away from "It was rubbish, it didn't have Charlie Sheen in it."

So what can be said about what it actually was?

Well, firstly this story feels rather like the sort of adventure we would normally never see but hear about.

"You sure you know what you're doing?"
"Course I know what I'm doing. Remember on that space ambulance where I defeated the alien by tricking it into eating the bomb?"
"We were too busy helping that bloke give birth, remember?"
"Oh yeah. Well, it still worked out, though!"

It's an adventure up there with the Medusoids or Jim the Fish or anything with Samson and Gemma, something that was better left off-screen. Seeing it in detail robs it of the quality you can imagine, like many a BF prequel. Yes, Magnus Greel had an amazing life, but the revelation he was just lusting after Nyssa and got all his toys from Findecker the alien git removes any mystique and makes it all feel pedestrian.

Also, this is a story where the direction is a tad schizophrenic. The quiet character scenes are much better than anything attempting drama or excitement. Ryan and Yaz discussing family, the android's passive-aggression with the nurse, the Doctor's cultural lust for antimatter, all work great whereas chasing alien monsters down corridors, flying through asteroids or defusing bombs seems tedious and uninvolving. The climax with the Pting and the bomb is utterly unengaging, yet is interspersed with the Doctor and Yaz's arguments over how stupid the plan is (which feels a very traditional Doctor/companion scene than any other Yaz has had so far) which keeps the attention. When a gormless bloke showing ultrasounds is more thrilling than an alien biting the sonic screwdriver out of the Doctor's hand, something has gone wrong.

It's interesting to compare with Chibber's own 42. There's a roughly similar plot, a race against time to save a beleagured spaceship from an alien threat and provide some emotional closure for all involved. But that story was focused entirely on the adventure, the cast got some pencil-faint characterization between monster fodder, and there were exciting space-walks and freezing sequences. Here, there's not the same rush. It isn't a slasher killer episode, and only one character dies like the sacrificial lion mentor of old, inspiring his protege because if he stayed alive there wouldn't be any tension. When Tennant was possessed by the sun, his agony and torment were a dramatic peak; here, Jodie's spleen trouble is entirely her own fault and if she'd just stayed still for an hour wouldn't have any problems. (Still thank god no one at the Daily Mail highlighted scenes of the Doctor clutching her stomach in agony and claimed "It's That Time (Lord) Of The Month!") Tennant's obsessive desire to save the day was the only thing to keep a hopeless situation together; Jodie spends the first half of her episode being told to calm the hell down.

Yet such a scene is played for drama rather than comedy (something I can only recall happening in Scherzo or The Stolen Earth) and has the Doctor admit she's letting her insecurity and selfishness endanger others. It's a scene few other Doctors would have had, with even the nice ones probably saying "Sorry, you're right" and changing the subject. Capaldi would probably have ignored it completely, screwed everyone over and stood over the corpses brooding about the pointlessness of existence. Here, Jodie's Doctor chastises herself for putting her desires over other people's - seemingly unique in modern society with "every man for itself" mentality.

Similarly, this scene - one that an action adventure would skip entirely - is a standout. Yoss' pregnancy is a crude excuse to give two companions something to do, and if you removed the fact Yoss is a bloke, the story would be exactly the same with no doubt a teenage redneck girl with a Texan accent wanting to give up her baby. That probably would have offended someone, I suppose. That said, if Yoss had been a more traditional underage mum, it would have sorted out some logistical problems (Yoss has only been pregnant for three days, yet must be over eight to be overdue for his species, and it's odd that if males become pregnant they require C-sections because they cannot birth them naturally which is surely counter-intuitive evolutionarily-speaking).

Either way, the beats are still the same, from Yoss getting people to feel the baby kick to going into labor at an awkward moment and then deciding to keep the baby. Yoss has no real link to the rest of the plot. He didn't sabotage the engines or get knocked up the Old Lady. He has nothing to do with the plot, not even being threatened by being eaten by the Pting (even though it would be interested in his "birth pod" technology). Even the bloke being pregnant is only a visual gag. The only jokes made are that Yoss is so stupid he thinks "Avocado Pear" is a heroic name from Earth history. Maybe there is a famous au pair known as Ava Card?

Ava Card au pair?

No?

No.

This is a straightforward linear A-to-B storyline with no real surprises (bar the Doctor's eagerness to blow up the bomb she should be defusing). We can imagine that the sonic mine might be a clue to a future storyline. We can pretend these "dark times" of the 67th Century have something to do with the Stenza. We can, if we use the pause control very well, laugh hysterically at the idea that Davros has been barred from using Tsungara space ambulances and been chucked out (along with Slitheen, Zygons, Sontarans, Ood, the Silence, Old Skool Silurians and Cybermen) for bad behavior. But even the panic that the TARDIS might again be stolen turns out to be damp squib.

Ultimately we have an episode that's just as hard to hate as to love.

Which is damn inconvenient when you're trying to review these things!

What do the DWADs have to say?

I've given Whitticker (sic) 5 episodes now and it just isn't working for me. Dull dull, zero character beyond the superficial. I'm afraid it is getting to the point where my opinion is solidifying and that even a good performance (if she is capable of it) will not register. There comes a point where it becomes "Too Late".

Yeah, well, at least she can pronounce "TARDIS" properly, ya jerk!


In the meantime, some mini reviews:

The Woman Who Fell To Earth - just like Terminator, only less time paradoxes and more drunks with kebabs

The Ghost Monument - one of those Blake's 7 episodes trying to be Star Wars

Rosa - The Time Meddler only this time, more racist!

Arachnids in the UK - Donald Trump versus Eight-Legged Freaks

The Tsungara Conundrum - that Electric Dream episode about the conmen taking the old lady and the android to Earth, only the pregnant man from the title sequence is actually part of the plot

Demons of the Punjab - Fathers Day meets Goodness Gracious Me!

Kerblam! - remember that BF with the Seventh Doctor and Mel, The Warehouse? No, me neither

The Witch Finders - the perfect Halloween episode, a whole month after Halloween!

It Takes You Away - reverse the polarity of the M Night Shamalayan!

Insert title here

Doctor Who - Trumpophobia

When RTD revived the perfectly-preserved corpse of Doctor Who in 2005, he created a seasonal structure that has lasted to this day. The show starts with an exciting contemporary episode to introduce the cast, then TARDIS trips to the not-so-nice future and a celebrity historical, then back home to show the craziness is not a one-off and the companion cements their decision to keep traveling as a third-wheel companion is added to the mix. The rest of the season builds to a climax of impending apocalypse that can only be stopped with some technobabble that loses the companion and via a "WTF?!" moment leads to a Christmas special.

RTD's four series followed the pattern, though it was shifted up a bit when it came to adding Mickey or Martha to the mix, or doing historicals before sci-fi. Moffat stuck rigidly to that structure for his first season but the fact he didn't chuck out the cast or resolve the story arcs meant that there was no incentive to do it for his second which, perhaps coincidentally, tanked. He went back to RTD's Skeleton for 2012, 2013 and, bizarrely 2014 (which was odd given the main characters were so utterly jaded it was literally going through the motion). For Season Nine, Moffat tried to do his own thing and tanked, and was forced to go back to first principles for 2017 to win over a crowd by not basing your season format by being a trolling Scottish misanthrope.

Unsurprisingly, Chibnall is not arrogantly trying to reinvent a perfectly serviceable wheel and in the fine tradition of Aliens of London, The Lazarus Experiment, The Sontaran Stratagem and, um, The Caretaker and Knock-Knock, we have the "companions returning home to realize they can't just walk away from the mad(wo)man in the box" as they encounter their less-than-ideal families and learn that no, the craziness won't stop. Moffat had absolutely no interest in the relatives of his companions, with Amy's non-existent parents being first a plot point and then genuinely ignored altogether. No one can ignore the fact that Elsie Oswald, Brian Williams, and whatever Bill's mum was called all appear when Moffat isn't writing. Even when he made Amy and Rory River's parents it was ignored bar the odd one liner. Despite having a far more stable family relationship than RTD did, Moffat had no interest of that sort of thing getting in the way of his stories. Hell, a cut scene revealed Clara's dad was murdered by a Zygon which shows you how much that would have affected Clara's character for her last few stories.

Of course, we already know about the O'Brien/Sinclair family with the disappeared dad and the women dying tragically young. Ryan has quickly realized that Graham, Yaz and the Doctor have far greater claim to be his "proper family" than the unseen and entitled sociopath from whose loins he sprouted. Graham himself meanwhile can't cope with confronting a Grace-less world and probably would even have chosen Capaldi instead - certainly Moffat's poor track records with happy companion endings is confronted here. The Doctor can't promise her new gang will be safe or even unchanged by the experience, but they're up for it. This is a nice change from the previous regime where all companions were simply vanity projects for the Doctor (who wanted to solve the mystery of Amy's crack, River Song's kill list, Clara's impossibility, and wanted Bill as a distraction from his dayjob) who all died horrible, horrible deaths after their lives were utterly ruined.

But no, this time, the Doctor is a good thing. If a slightly embarrassing one and while Yaz has been forced into the background, the Nyssa of this new Season 19 gang, she comes slightly to the fore here. She's used to being the dullest of a foursome as we meet her not-unpleasant-but-not-that-pleasant-either family. Her dad's a friendly conspiracy nut who will dump other people's rubbish in his living room as a protest no one knows about it. Her sister is a job-shy man-slut phone-addict. Her mum has a life, and it's clear she could cope perfectly well without her lameass family hanging around her like a stone albatross, but Yaz's mum is so damn nice she sticks with them anyway. They're credible as people and probably quite acceptable neighbors. But it's no surprise given a choice of making up the numbers for Khan get-togethers and TARDIS travel, Yaz is so obsessed with the Doctor that she is being mistaken as the Time Lady's lover. Just like Rose, Clara and Bill were. And Martha very obviously wasn't.

Given the "hang on, are you shagging my first born daughter?" scene with the companion's mother is now up there with shouting down a Dalek eyestalk as stuff-proper-Doctors-have-to-do, it would feel weird to lose that just now the Doctor's a chick. And of course, despite her clear confusion at the idea she bonks her friends, Yaz only ends up strongly hinting that, yes, she is so into that hot Gallifreyan action. Plus the conventional romance building between her and Ryan and we could be into that other New Series trope of the TARDIS love triangle. Given the Doctor's now using some brand new psychic paper (quite unnecessarily in this episode, at least) it seems like more and more of the pre-Chib era is starting to seep through the new glossy paint.

Needless to say the Old Skool vibe is drowned out by a frankly-deafening cacophony of Ye Olde Doctor Who as Chibbers outdoes Moffat's fan fetish of 2015 - no mining out the guts of the Hinchliffe years with sequels to Genesis of the Daleks, Terror of the Zygons and The Deadly Assassin. He goes for the ones everyone remembers, The One With The Giant Maggots and The One With The Giant Spiders and slams them together. An unscrupulous company dumps toxic waste that affects wildlife. A corrupt executive in blatant parody of a contemporary political leader. A companion strongly contemplating leaving the Doctor. Giant creepy-crawlies slaughtering bit part characters and leaving their bodies covered in practical special effects. The Doctor mourning a giant monster that needed killing. Regular characters coping with loss and having their own adventures. Letters arriving from unseen characters leading to giant spiders. A giant spider queen whose death throes make it sympathetic. Kitchen materials being used to combat a disaster. A friendly character referred to as "mum" despite having a name. The Doctor facing her greatest fear. The TARDIS getting to its destination for once.

Frankly, like 2013's Hide, it's like someone at BBC Wales got drunk and did a sparacus story seriously.

So what did sparacus think?


7/10. Not bad actually. Pitched at child level but ok, despite the awful Trump like character. I accept that the company disposing of the waste from the lab acted irresponsibly, as did the hotel entrepreneur. However the principle of utilising brownfield sites for construction is a positive one. Extremely disappointing that there was no reference to Metabelis 3 or Planet of the Spiders. Lack of respect for the classic series.

Well, I think that--

The 3rd Doctor would have taken a much more overtly political stance against the greedy corporate bodies responsible for dumping the toxic lab material and building the hotel. He would approached it all very seriously and with a greater air of authority. Moreover Jo Grant would have been more passionate about the ecological issues raised rather than these air-headed new companions who only seem to care about their personal relationships.

Excuse me, I--

A number of politically correct things noticeable this week:

1) The Trump-like US businessman. Portrayed extremely negatively.

2) The anti-gun use agenda being pushed again, despite the fact that shooting the spider was more humane than letting it die slowly of lack of oxygen.

3) The scary spider plot feeds into the latest health & safety political correctness panic in the UK i.e. fear of false widow spiders which has already led to several schools being needlessly closed.Over-the-top health and safety regulations are a form of political correctness. I accept that the shooting of the spider was not efficiently carried out. However its death would have taken longer the other way. False widow spiders are essentially harmless and it is wring to teach children to be afraid of the natural world.Well yes, however how many giant man-eating spiders actually exist in the UK? Fear of spiders is at best crankish and at worst a springboard to killing harmless creatures.

SHUT! UP!!

Sheesh! Of course lots of people will be complaining about how the spiders eat a lesbian (which is terrible, but consuming heterosexual white males is just natural selection, right kids?) or how Trump-Lite got off so easily or how Not-Osgood technically caused this whole giant monster business or that machine-gunning creatures to death is less cruel than letting them die of natural causes. I say, stuff them.

The plot relies not on Trump-Lite and Not-Osgood being evil, but on being trusting. There was no deliberate plan from either of them given one is arachnophobic and the other arachnophilic, neither would want a situation where giant spiders run amock. Trump-Lite trusted Frankie-The-Lesbian-Niece-In-Law to simply sort out this mess before he had to deal with it, and Not-Osgood assumed the garbage men would actually do their freaking job. Hell, Trump-Lite's argument about building his hotel over the mines isn't even suggested as a bad thing per se, the Doctor just notes it's done so badly it's causing a problem. The crucial thing is that Not-Osgood accepts responsibility for this disaster and its resolution, while Trump-Lite doesn't. Similarly, his argument that killing the mother spider would be an act of mercy isn't outright wrong, but it is being spoken by a psychotic arachnaphobe pumping random bullets into a defenseless enemy screaming how he's better than the current President of the United States. Any mercy is entirely unintentional, though I found the sudden jump-cut to the TARDIS without Trump-Lite facing any consequences (or even the threat of consequences on firing illegal firearms on British soil, not to mention all the dead bodies he's connected with) smacks of poor editing. Or maybe a story arc. Either way, no one is arguing he'd be a better choice for POTUS than the guy they have now.

Indeed, due to some dodgy sound I actually found Trump-Lite almost sympathetic. When a gigantic spider smashes out of his bathtub and tries to attack him, the terrified spider-fearer instinctively slams the door and locks his bodyguard in with the spider. Given Trump-Lite's blind panic and the fact Kevin the bodyguard was packing heat, this isn't as nasty and cruel than it might seem (compare Capaldi's Doctor letting someone have their brain ripped out in the vault because he's busy eating sushi). When it seems the bodyguard has perished, Trump-Lite appears to gasp "I have to mourn Kevin!" in the same way he similarly-schedules bathroom breaks. He acknowledges his employee is dead and deserves respect before he rightfully prioritizes not-being-eaten-by-a-giant-spider.

But no. Actually, he said "I have no more Kevins!" - i.e., no more expendable employees left to sacrifice.

Damn, Trump-Lite, I gave you a chance, man...


‘These days, you can’t even stay round a giant spider that will likely kill and eat you in case it offends a Sikh. It’s political correctness gone mad Stew!’